Norsk Hydro Defends Status of Planned Norway-EU Power Cables

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Planned power cables linking Norway
to Germany and the U.K. must not be reserved for state
ownership, according to Norsk Hydro ASA, Norway’s largest
private electricity producer.

A government proposal for state ownership “goes too
far,” Morten Roesaeg, director of energy supply and development
at Norsk Hydro, Norway’s second-biggest hydropower producer and
the country’s largest power user, said today in a response
published on the oil and energy ministry’s website.

The Norwegian government said all cross-border power cables
from Norway should be under state ownership through grid company
Statnett SF, in a public consultation on proposals to amend the
energy act, posted on the website on Sept. 18.

NorthConnect, owned by Sweden’s Vattenfall AB and the
U.K.’s SSE Plc, as well as Norway’s E-CO Energi AS, Agder Energi
AS and Lyse Energi AS, plans to build a 1,400-megawatt cable
linking Norway to the U.K. by 2020.

A growing power surplus in the region means that cables to
EU countries may be used for “commercial purposes”, to strike
profits from power exports, a function which is ill-suited for a
publicly owned grid operator and better fits private companies,
Norsk Hydro said in the response to the consultation which will
end on Nov. 16.

More than 50 terawatt-hours of new annual output through
2017 may push down Nordic power prices, Per Lekander, an analyst
at UBS AG bank, said on Oct. 2 by telephone. The projected
generation compares with annual Danish power demand of 34.4
terawatt-hours.